


The Things He's Done for Love

by orphan_account



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Not Canon Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 12:33:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18917074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jaime spends the last days of his life with the three people he loves the most.Disclaimer: All characters belong to GRRM and HBO.





	1. Leaving Winterfell

**Author's Note:**

> I had a hard time reconciling Jaime's actions at the end of Game of Thrones with his character development, so I wrote this fic as an exercise/coping mechanism in which all the main plot points leading up to his death still occur, but the execution of them is different and paints Jaime in a somewhat more forgiving light. I thought some of you guys might be interested in reading it too :)

            Jaime fumbled clumsily with the straps of his saddlebag, securing the few possessions he’d brought with him to Winterfell as best he could. The night was quiet enough for him to hear her soft tread as she approached him through the snow; he averted his gaze as she emerged from the shadows, her figure brightened by the twin lights of moon and fire. He’d expected this, though he’d left her as quietly as he could; the gods would never have allowed him to get away so easily.

            “They’re going to destroy that city.” She didn’t speak until she stood only a foot away from him; finally Jaime turned to look at her, at the towering lady knight who watched him with her arms crossed over her chest, fear and despair brightening her eyes. It was hard for him to study her face, knowing what he was going to have to do.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jaime told her. “I have to go back, Brienne.”

            Brienne lunged forward and cupped his face between her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes. “You don’t,” she insisted. “You can stay up here, with me. There’s nothing you can do to stop it, Jaime—she’s going to die, but you don’t have to.”

            “She’s carrying my child, Brienne. She’s my sister. I can’t leave her to die alone.” He reached up with his own hand and grabbed one of hers, cradling it as softly as he could between gloved fingers. “I have to try.”

            “She doesn’t deserve it,” Brienne growled, her voice cracking with grief and cold and anger. “She doesn’t deserve you, Jaime.”

            Jaime forced a rueful smile. “You know what I’ve done as well as anyone. I crippled a boy for life; I strangled my cousin with my own hands. I’m a hateful man, Brienne—as hateful as she is.”

            Brienne shook her head. “You’re not. She would never do this for you; you know she wouldn’t. She’s never loved you the way you love her.” Her lips were trembling, her brilliant eyes brimming with unshed tears. “The way you love no one _but_ her.”

            Jaime gripped her hand tightly in his. “That’s not true,” he said, a little too forcefully. He locked eyes with her, willing his to convey everything he could not tell her in words: that he did love her, differently but no less intensely than the way he loved Cersei; that her faith in him had changed him in a way he had thought he could never be changed after everything he’d done; that the long-forgotten sense of honor and duty she had awoken in him was the very reason he was compelled to try and save Cersei and the city she called her home. The Jaime Lannister who’d slain Aerys Targaryen could not stand by while King’s Landing burned, and neither could the Jaime Lannister Brienne had fallen for, the Jaime she’d helped to create.

            Brienne nodded, swallowing and looking away. She may not have understood everything Jaime wanted to tell her, but she understood enough.

            “I’m sorry I lay with you, Brienne,” he said. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

            “You were going to hurt me either way,” she replied. “I’m not sorry, not for any of it.” She leaned in and pulled him into one last, long kiss. Jaime cupped his hand around her head and caressed her snow-strewn locks, the warmth of her breath driving away the tang of the cold night wind for the best of moments. Jaime never wanted to pull away—he wanted to follow her back into their bed, to lay with her under the furs until the sun rose again. If only he could.

            Brienne was the first to break the kiss; by now her tears flowed freely down her cheeks. “Go,” she choked out, her hands finally leaving Jaime’s face.

            He nodded, giving her one last look before mounting his horse and riding off into the night. As he rode, he kept her stricken face fixated in his mind for as long as he could; he knew it was the last time he’d ever lay eyes on Brienne of Tarth.  


	2. In the Tent

             “You came back to die with her.”

             Jaime turned his head at the sound of his brother’s voice, the collar around his neck chafing his skin. Tyrion’s brow was furrowed as he studied the elder Lannister, the pin that marked him as Hand of the Queen glinting in the firelight.

            “Are you surprised, little brother?”

            Tyrion circled around the tent until he stood in front of Jaime—for once the dwarf was the taller of the two, towering over his older brother. “I suppose not,” he admitted. “Though I’d quite hoped that the Maid of Tarth would have knocked some sense into you.”

            Jaime sighed, closing his eyes as memories of Brienne flooded his mind. “No one could have kept me away, not once I realized what your Dragon Queen plans to do.”

            “And what does Daenerys plan to do?” Tyrion wondered warily.

            Jaime met his brother’s eyes. “You know,” he said. “She’s going to destroy King’s Landing, just as her father tried to.”

            “Daenerys is not her father,” Tyrion insisted, “no more than we are ours. She didn’t come here to kill.”

            Jaime’s mouth twisted into a sardonic smile. “She’s a conqueror, brother; she’s here for the throne. Are you trying to tell me she won’t have her dragon burn down every person who stands in the way of it?”

            Tyrion settled himself against the lip of a barrel, meeting Jaime eye-to-eye. “She’d kill Cersei, of course, if she got her hands on her.”

            “And our unborn child with her.”

            “But what if she never found Cersei?” Tyrion’s eyes glimmered in the firelight. “What if Cersei surrendered the city and fled the Red Keep, never to be heard from again?”

            “And how do you propose that would happen?”

            Tyrion held up a key, the key to Jaime’s shackles. “I had Ser Davos smuggle a dinghy into the cove outside the lowest level of the Red Keep. Take her down there and escape. Command someone to ring the bells and open the gates in surrender; my queen has promised she’ll halt her attack if the city lays down its arms.” He leaned forward until he was only inches from Jaime’s face. “You can save the city and our sister both. That’s what you came here to do, isn’t it?”

            Jaime nodded wordlessly. Tyrion smiled his always-sad smile and squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “You can start a new life with Cersei in Essos, or you could go back to Brienne; whatever you choose.”

            “I can’t go back to her,” Jaime said, shaking his head. “I don’t deserve her.” He loved her—he was certain of that now—but she was good and he was not; and he knew in the back of his mind that he’d never truly be able to give up Cersei, his queen and sister and mother to his children. Brienne deserved a man who could offer her his whole heart, a man as just and honorable as she was. And Jaime knew he could never be that man, as much as he wished it were otherwise.

            Tyrion slipped the key into Jaime’s collar and pried it open, letting the cold metal thud to the ground. “I never thought I’d get to repay the favor.”

            Jaime reached out and grasped his brother’s hand in his. “Thank you.” Not only for freeing him, but for giving him the chance to fulfill his duty, to save Cersei and King’s Landing. Whether or not Queen Daenerys had planned to execute him after her attack, Jaime would never have been able to live with himself if he’d been stuck in chains while the world burned.

            “I owe you, don’t I?” Tyrion replied. “Not just for helping me escape my own imprisonment. If it weren’t for you, I never would have survived my childhood.”

            “You would have,” Jaime said softly, staring up at his teary-eyed little brother. Tyrion had survived so much, more than Jaime ever could have endured. He bristled whenever he was called _Kingslayer_ , but he knew Tyrion was called much worse, _monster_ and _Imp_ and _demon_ —he’d been feared and reviled ever since his birth, loathed by his own family. No wonder he’d turned on the Lannisters once he met his Dragon Queen. Jaime didn’t like what his brother had done, but he certainly understood it. He was the smartest, strongest person Jaime knew, someone he admired just as much as his lady knight.

            Tyrion shook his head, biting his trembling lip. “You were the only one who didn’t treat me like a monster. You were all I had, Jaime.”

            Jaime pulled his brother into an embrace, his eyes blurring with tears as Tyrion sobbed quietly against his shoulder. As with Brienne, there was so much Jaime wanted to tell him: that he loved him, that he was proud of him in spite of everything, that he couldn’t have been less of a monster. He pressed his head against his brother’s and gave him the softest of kisses, hoping that would say enough.


	3. Joanna

            “Cersei.”

            Jaime stumbled towards his sister, who stood silhouetted by the noon sun as she looked out at the city from the grand balcony of the Red Keep. She was dressed in regal red velvet trimmed with gold, a Lannister lioness right up to the end.

            She turned to him as he approached, her eyes immediately dropping to the blood that leached through his vest. “You’re bleeding,” she murmured.

            “It was your pirate king,” Jaime told her. Euron had stabbed him twice, and both were wounds he knew were deadly, too deep for any maester to heal. He wasn’t going to survive the day; but Cersei might. The people of King’s Landing might. All he had to do was convince her of it.

            Cersei rushed to his side and placed her hand tenderly over the wound to his stomach, letting his blood run over her fingers. Jaime hadn’t been sure what kind of reception he’d receive from his sister, not after she’d sent Bronn after him and Tyrion—but the way she looked at him now was full of love and relief, with no traces of the Cersei who had told him she was leaving Westeros to the army of the dead, the Cersei he’d left for Winterfell and for Brienne. This was the Cersei he’d fallen in love with.

            “I thought our men would fight for us to the death,” Cersei said. “But they’ve laid down their arms, scared into submission by that wench and her bloody dragon. They want me to ring the bells, Jaime.”

            Jaime grabbed her bloodied hand and pulled it gently away from him. “It’s over, Cersei. They’ve surrendered because they know we have lost. Surely you don’t want them to die for nothing?”

            “We haven’t lost,” Cersei said through her teeth. “The city will not fall.”

            Silently Jaime guided her back to the balcony and nodded to the enormous beast circling over the city like a fire-breathing vulture, ready to swoop down for a kill. “The scorpions have all been burned to rubble; the Iron Fleet is gone. Who is going to bring down the dragon?” Cersei didn’t respond; Jaime noticed her mouth tightening as he spoke. His sister was no fool—she knew he was right. There was no way they could win this battle.

            “What do you suggest I do, then?” Cersei murmured. “Surrender and wait for the Dragon Queen to send her foreign eunuchs in to kill me? I’m going to die either way.” She rested a hand on her stomach, gently protruding from underneath her dress. “Our baby is going to die either way.”

            “You could escape,” Jaime told her, turning her head to look her in the eyes. “There is a boat waiting for us just outside the Red Keep. You can get out of here, start a new life somewhere else. Anywhere in the world, Cersei. But first we have to save King’s Landing.”

            Cersei scoffed. “And why would we do that? If Daenerys Targaryen wants this city, she’ll have to take it for herself. Let her kill her future subjects first; let’s see how much they love her then.”

            Jaime took in a breath. “You’d let them all die for nothing?”

            “I don’t care about any of them,” she spat. “Only us. You and the child are all that matter to me now, Jaime. And you’re _dying_.”

            He rested a hand on his sister’s belly. “I know,” he murmured. “But with or without me, don’t you want to be a mother our child can say he is proud of?”

            Cersei smiled a little at that. “Why are you certain our child will be a boy?”

            “I’m not.”

            “I’d like another girl,” Cersei said softly. “I’d name her Joanna, after our mother. I wanted to name Myrcella after her, but Robert would never have allowed it. We had to give her a Baratheon name instead.”

            “Joanna, then,” Jaime said. “One day you’ll be able to tell her the story of how her mother saved King’s Landing from a Targaryen tyrant.”

            “Just like her father,” Cersei pointed out.

            “Just like her father,” Jaime agreed. “We’ll be heroes, Cersei, to her and to any other children we may have. Every terrible thing we’ve ever done will pale in comparison to all the lives we could save today.” He prayed that she would understand—surrendering the city was the best thing Cersei could do for her unborn child. He wouldn’t be there to help her raise them, but he could do this.

            Cersei glanced down at her hands. “Before I killed Missandei, our brother told me that I wasn’t a monster. How fitting would it be for me to prove him right?” She turned from Jaime to glance back out into the hallway, where her Hand was waiting. “Qyburn?”

            The disgraced maester stepped forward, bowing. “Yes, Your Grace?”

            “Give the order to ring the bells and open the gates. We’re surrendering the city.”

            He blinked in surprise, giving another hasty bow. “At once, Your Grace.” He scuffled away, and within a minute the bells were ringing, their sweet toll reverberating around the city and silencing the faraway calls from below.

            Jaime reached out to offer Cersei his hand. “Follow me.”


	4. Promises Broken, Prophecies Fulfilled

          They were halfway down the steps to the ground level of the Keep when the stone beneath their feet began to shake, and the unmistakable roar of an angry dragon pierced the air. Jaime pulled his sister to the side and stood over her protectively as the pillars behind them snapped apart and a large swath of ceiling came crumbling down in a burst of flame. As the smoke cleared, he could hear a new set of shrieks coming from below, and the shadow of a dragon wing flitted across the newly-exposed sky above them.

            He helped his sister up; they both stumbled to reclaim their bearings. “She’s attacking the Red Keep,” Cersei breathed. “Even after we surrendered, that white-haired bitch is attacking us.”

            Tyrion’s words echoed in Jaime’s head: _Daenerys is not her father_. He’d believed his brother was right about his queen, that she wouldn’t put innocent lives at risk when there was a better way to take the throne. He’d thought the bells would be enough to stay her hand, just as his brother had promised. It seemed that Tyrion didn’t know the Mother of Dragons as well as he thought he did.

            Jaime grabbed Cersei’s arm, pulling her forcefully down the stairs as the dragon’s roars grew louder and his lungs filled with smoke. They’d been moving slowly because of his injuries, but now they had no choice but to hurry. Fear and adrenaline dulled Jaime’s pain until he was nearly running with his sister, debris and ash raining down around them.

            “Where is Ser Gregor?” Cersei panted. “He should be by my side.”

            “It doesn’t matter,” Jaime growled. “We have to get you out of here.”

            He led her down beneath the Keep, to the dungeons where the skulls of the old Targaryen dragons had been laid to rest. Jaime remembered the first time he saw the skulls, as a boy newly appointed to Aerys’s Kingsguard—back then, the creatures that had once inhabited them had been resigned to legend. If only they had stayed legends.

            He grabbed one of the torches that lined the walls and pressed on with Cersei to the archway which he knew opened up into the cove Tyrion had mentioned. “Come on. Not much further.”

            When they reached it, however, no light seeped out from the other side—all the archways had been sealed shut by rock and brick from the crumbling Keep. His innards sinking, Jaime attempted to climb up the nearest and clear a way through, but Cersei stopped him with a gentle hand to his arm. “It’s no use, Jaime. We’re trapped here.”

            _No_. “We can’t be trapped,” Jaime insisted. “There has to be a way out.” He glanced around frantically, looking for anything that could help him save his sister and their child. But Cersei was right—there was no way out.

            “At least we’re together,” Cersei said, pulling him back around to face her. “We came into this world together; we were always meant to leave it together.”

            Jaime shook his head, tenderly stroking her cheek. Her eyes were hard, determined not to betray fear even now. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The baby….”

            “I was told long ago that I would only bear three children. The baby would have been a miracle; and I don’t deserve a miracle.”

            The two siblings searched each other’s eyes for the last time. A strange sense of peace lit Cersei’s. Jaime had accepted his death the moment he left Brienne in Winterfell—now, finally, his sister was accepting hers. Jaime had done everything he could to save her, to save everyone, but it hadn’t been enough. Everything was coming back around: he had saved King’s Landing once from a Targaryen’s wrath, and now the Mad King’s daughter was returning to claim her family’s long-denied prize. It was ironic, really. But at least he and Cersei could find comfort in their last moments.

            Jaime wrapped his sister in his arms, pressing his head to hers and whispering sweet nothings in her ear as the world fell to pieces around them. It wasn’t the worst way to die, after all—in the arms of one of the women he loved.


	5. Two Corpses

            Tyrion’s heart stopped when he saw the hand.  

            It lay hidden amongst the rubble, glinting in the soft light that poured in through a gaping wound in the walls. Its gold was dulled by the dust that covered it, but there was no questioning what it was, or what it meant.

            Shakily he approached it, every step sending shocks of pain through his heart. That hand, that bloody golden hand. His brother’s hand.

            Falling to his knees, he began to pick through the rocks around it until he uncovered what they concealed. He revealed Cersei’s face first, streaked with red but as still and calm as if she was sleeping. And in spite of what she was, in spite of everything she had done, the sight was enough to draw out a sob from deep within him. He’d imagined his sister’s death hundreds of times throughout his life, and in his thoughts and dreams it had always brought him satisfaction—but now that his childhood wish had been fulfilled, he felt only guilt and grief, a hollowness settling somewhere among his insides.

            And then he uncovered Jaime, his brother and dearest of friends, his head gently resting on Cersei’s lifeless chest. Tyrion fell back at the sight of it, his body giving out beneath him. His head began to spin, his vision going hazy— _Jaime_. _My Jaime_. The only person in the world who had loved him when he was a boy, possibly the only person who had ever loved him. The person who would sneak into his room and sing him to sleep after every prank or humiliation from his father and sister, who brought him books and toys and taught him to ride a horse when Tywin told him he was too small to ever learn. Jaime had gifted him a million small kindnesses, not to reap any benefits but simply because he cared for his little brother. Tyrion had never entirely understood it, how his brother could so love the vile Imp who’d killed his mother, but it was the only reason he was still standing.

            And now Jaime was dead—killed by the very queen he’d helped bring into power. Dead at Tyrion’s own hand.

            “I’m sorry, brother,” Tyrion choked out, leaning over his brother’s corpse and smoothing shut his half-open eyes. He pressed his head to Jaime’s, fresh tears mixing with dried blood. “I’m so sorry.”

            Daenerys was going to pay for this. She had to.


	6. The Book of Brothers

            Brienne flipped slowly through the pages of the Book of Brothers, her eyes skimming over the exploits of famed knights like Ser Arthur Dayne and Duncan the Tall. All great men of Kingsguards past—and now she had joined their ranks. Ser Brienne of Tarth, Lady Commander of the Kingsguard.

            She’d wanted to stay in the North with Sansa, of course, but the new queen had ordered her to watch over her brother in the capital instead. Queen Sansa had only friends in the North, while King Bran was sure to have his rule questioned by angry, power-starved southerners. Brienne had already begun to hear whisperings in the streets of King’s Landing about the folly of putting a crippled Stark boy on the throne—so here she was, the leader of his Kingsguard, ready to lay down her life to save his if need be.

            Brienne reached Jaime’s entry, only half a page long with two lion-emblazoned blank pages following. Half a page, describing his murder of King Aerys and little else. He could have filled in more while he was Lord Commander, but the deeds written in his own hand only recounted the murder of Joffrey and ascension of King Tommen. Nothing about himself at all.

            She glanced behind her to the lion statue she’d placed underneath her window, gleaming proudly in the sun, and then to Oathkeeper laid out on the table before her. Both reminders of Jaime, as if she needed any. Tyrion had offered her Jaime’s hand, too, the golden cast replacing the one he’d lost in her defense, but she’d told him to keep it for himself. What she had already was enough.

            She bit her lip as she thought about what to write. How to describe Ser Jaime Lannister, a man who had killed hundreds and saved half a million, who had once tried to kill her and once saved her life, who was proud and arrogant and deeply ashamed? Depending on how she wrote his story, he could be either a hero or a villain; it was all up to her.

            But she knew the answer already. Because as much as Jaime had hurt her, he had also made her happier than she ever could have imagined: he’d made her the first female knight in Westeros, and he’d lain with her and loved her as she thought no man would ever deign to do. He had broken her heart when he left her, ripped it into pieces that would likely never come together again, but she knew that he’d done it for the right reasons, for honor. He was a good man, even if she was the only one able to see it. And she would ensure that was how he’d be remembered.

            First she corrected the information already written: she crossed out Tyrion’s name and wrote in Olenna Tyrell as Joffrey’s true murderer, and added the real reason for Jaime’s kingslaying, his finest act. Then she wrote of his capture by Robb Stark and release by Catelyn, of the loss of his hand and the mission he had charged Brienne with. She wrote of how he freed his brother from unjust imprisonment and how he saved his daughter from the clutches of vengeance only for her to die in his arms. She wrote of his bloodless capture of Riverrun and his bravery in the Lannisters’ fight against the Dothraki and Daenerys’s dragon. And she wrote of his help in the Great War against the dead, and his final, failed attempt to save King’s Landing and his family from destruction. _Died protecting his Queen, his child and his city_.

            She swallowed back the lump in her throat as she reread her words. Jaime had spent most of his life as the Man Without Honor; in death, his name would finally be cleared. Brienne couldn’t save the man she loved from a horrible fate, but at least she could do this.

            “Goodbye, Ser Jaime,” she murmured, gently caressing his pages in the book as if his soul lived within them. Perhaps it did. “We will never forget you.”


End file.
